


Refining Nectar

by Rillian_Rohirrim



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 03:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21047525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rillian_Rohirrim/pseuds/Rillian_Rohirrim
Summary: Inspired by the movie Jupiter Ascending.  Focuses more on background ideas I found interesting than the main characters in the movie.





	1. Tavien's Dreams

Chapter One: Tavien’s Perspective

My parents wanted me to study to be a gene splicer. It’s good work: it pays well, it’s respectable. There’s demand for the product you’re making, and if you’re really good at it you can even be rewarded with Nectar. They were right, of course. It would have been a wise way to use my time and creativity. Some splicers consider themselves artists, seeing each new being they create as their magnum opus. This tends to be less true for splicers who focus on lycantants, since they get mass-produced and are a rather crude form of splice. But even they require delicate work and are branded with their maker’s name.

  
I want to go into research. It’s a bit lofty, considering my birth. My family has no titles and only a little wealth, so I likely won’t live more than a few thousand years. Nectar is too hard to come by to be easily obtained by the lower classes. All the truly great researchers have been Entitled. They can keep returning to a youthful self while retaining all their knowledge and experience. It’s very helpful when tackling problems that take several centuries to understand, let alone solve. Admittedly, not that many Entitled bother with research. They’re already so enormously wealthy, they can have all the best Nectar and technology they want. Most never strive beyond these material things.

  
I want to study Nectar. Not the way it revives, that’s already a major area of study. I want to focus on how it is gathered and refined. I think that it may be possible to make it more easily, to claim fewer lives per vial. This could greatly improve production and decrease the cost, making Nectar more accessible to the poorer citizens of the verse. Shouldn’t youth be available to all?

  
The current process of extracting Nectar is rather unpleasant, so academics and researchers don’t tend to want to know too much about it. But I’m willing to get into the gory details in order to learn how to improve them.

  
We know Nectar is mostly stored inside humans’ heads, so that’s the area of focus for harvesting. But is there more in the rest of the bodies which could be filtered out and refined? Could a human continually grow more Nectar if some was removed in a non-lethal way? Is there a harvesting method which results in fewer contaminants (blood, skin particles, etc.) entering the Nectar, reducing the amount of processing required later?

  
I once saw a man who had bathed in a low-quality Nectar, contaminated with blood. He’d caught some disease from it and wasted away to just bones. It was curable, but he was so strung out on the high of feeling young again he never asked for help. I’ve heard there are hefty fees for using illegally harvested Nectar, so maybe he simply couldn’t afford to go to a hospital for treatment for fear that he would be caught. No one should have to live like that.

  
I’m not a humanitarian, by any means. I just know that there are ways to improve the system, and I’m the one who can find them. But it’s got to be careful work. If any of the Abrasax family found out I might jeopardize their holdings in Nectar production, I might end up being part of their supply chain. I’d like to keep the small amount of Nectar I do have where it belongs, in my veins. For now, I’m working at a Nectar production facility as a quality tester and biding my time.

  
Someday, I will become a researcher.


	2. Lycantant's Lament

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New characters are introduced. A possibly dangerous problem faces some of the workers.

Ambrose’s Perspective

People always say that lone lycantants rarely survive. There’s a pack instinct, and if the lycantant becomes a lone wolf instead, they just won’t live. No one says why they can’t live on their own. Perhaps the fact that a lone wolf likely has no support structure, no job, no family, no friends, might have something to do with it. A wolf who is connected to others in a meaningful way is considered to have formed a surrogate pack. A truly lone wolf must be lonely and desperate. No wonder few survive.

  
I started out life as a lone wolf. My creator, my splicer, was a drunk who should never have been put in charge of anything, much less the creation of lives. Even though lycantants are considered lower forms of life, we should still be granted the decency of being created in a way that follows basic safety protocols. Instead, I was brought into this universe clumsily, and I was the one to pay for this, not my maker. Unlike well-made lycantants, I have fur covering my entire body and completely wolf-like ears and teeth. The teeth are forced into a human-shaped mouth, so there are too few to be a proper set for a wolf and too many to be accepted on a human’s face.

  
Since I was malformed, no one was sure I would be able to survive for long. My splicer couldn’t sell me to the Aegis, or anyone else that would pay him for his trouble. Eventually, I made him sign me over to myself when he was drunk and complaining about being saddled with my care and feeding. I still don’t know if that transaction would hold up in court, but I don’t think I’ll have to find out. He died soon after. It was his own fault.

  
I named myself Ambrose after ambrosia, Nectar of the gods. A high name for a lowly worker. I maintain the sewage facilities in a major Nectar facility. It’s a living, technically. It’s also highly unsanitary and there are no regulations to try to improve it. But despite the horrible working conditions, the gross smells heightened by my canine sense of smell, and the lack of room for improvement, it’s a job I’ll keep.

  
At the Telore Nectar Processing Plant, there’s a group of outcasts working in the sewers. They’re my pack. They took me in despite my odd appearance. And I do the same for them. Some just ended up there because of money trouble. Others couldn’t find “professional” work after some trouble with the law. We’ve got runaways, bad splices, even a former doctor who became a political refugee and needed to go into hiding. We’re each other’s family now.

  
I’ve begun to suspect that something is wrong with the Telore plant. We’ve had Nectar leaking into the sewage. That stuff is more expensive than liquid gold, there’s no way anyone is flushing it away on purpose. But if the product is leaking in, any number of other chemicals could be coming with it. And that worries me.

  
Our doctor-turned-outcast, Capisian, has been discussing trying to reclaim the Nectar that’s washing down. If it worked, it would be an unexpected boon for our pack. But if it went wrong, we could all be poisoned. Our lifespans are short enough already, it might be worth the risk. While the Entitled live with not a care in the Verse, they live for millennia. Leeches on society, acting as though “running a business” is hard work. They worry about stock prices but fail to care even remotely about their workers, or the cost in lives their business demands.

  
If the Telore plant is broken, and management finds out, we could all lose our jobs. And if we don’t know what’s causing the leak, we can’t know what dangerous chemicals are being mixed with the runoff. It may be time for me to seek the cause of the problem for myself.


End file.
